This game was a strange experience for me, but one I ultimately liked quite a bit! Date Everything! is a dating sim/visual novel mix where the "dating" part is brought to the extreme: you have 100 characters to date, each with multiple endings! Of course, this means that no character can have the depth of a dating sim proper, but with tempered expectations there's a ton to love in here.
Story is pretty barebones, per se. You work for a megacorp but are fired because AI replaced you. Shortly after, you receive from a mysterious fellow a pair of technomagical glasses that can visualize every object in your home as a person of sorts, allowing you to date them! And that's basically it. The story proper goes along at a snail's pace, you're mostly left to your own devices and dating. It's very much a sandbox in this regard. The main gameplay loop is talking to the objects in five timeslots, then going to sleep and starting again the next day.
Naturally, objects are the beating heart of the game. They go from the mundane (Chairemy the chair, Dorian the door, etc.) to the "out there" (Overwhelming Sense of Existential Dread, named Doug, and Nightmare say hi), to the easter eggs (a glitch, the User Interface). Each has their own personality, arc, and may or may not have more or less involved quests to complete. The cast is so large it's impossible not to find someone to like and love (or hate!), and thankfully Date Everything! plays its cards right: the art is sublime, and the PLETHORA of voice actors (some of whom you might recognize!) are downright amazing. Each character makes an impression, for better or worse, and I liked most of them. The writing in general is solid, with a few stumbles and an attention to progressive and social themes I'm amazed I didn't see many people b1tch about. The game as a whole is basically a love letter to art and voice acting, and it works!
Graphically, the game isn't the prettiest (other than the characters) and it's heavy and a bit buggy too. Similarly, the music isn't anything special. Just adequate, for the most part. But all the same, the game will grant a ton of hours of content even for a single playthrough, and while I've had my fill the game is very replayable and you might not see every dialogue in hundreds of hours.
Overall, Date everything! is a truly unique beast, not perfect, but a bundle of fun, with staggering variety and something for everyone. And most of all, it feels like a true passion project and a labor of love, so I'm glad I took the plunge.
